i couldnt watch when my dogs P quils were taken out-we tried and did what the vet said and i couldnt do it=we lived in the mountians in Oregon so it was quite the trek to get Kia to the vet
vet insisted they had to be cut but maybe that is only when the animal is sedated???i idd see the barbs tho nasty little things=and not every vet is right about everything= i dont know-just hope to never see that again.

i couldnt watch when my dogs P quils were taken out-we tried and did what the vet said and i couldnt do it=we lived in the mountians in Oregon so it was quite the trek to get Kia to the vet
vet insisted they had to be cut but maybe that is only when the animal is sedated???i idd see the barbs tho nasty little things=and not every vet is right about everything= i dont know-just hope to never see that again.

You know, you could have a point there. I once saw a vet do this on a sedated dog and they did cut the quills too. But, as I said, if *we* have to do it the animal is awake and we don't want to be messing with those quills anymore than need be.

The other thing I remember about the last time I did this, some quills had broken off already and were therefore quite short. Not thinking about it, I wasn't particular about which quills I took out when, but ended up the short ones worked their way in further in the process and some ended up impossible to get out. It wasn't fun. If I had to do it again, I'd be more diligent about broken / short quills at the outset.

lets just hope this is a rare thing to have to deal with. I was an overly sensitive youngster and as i get older it is getting worse-bleeding heart perhaps??/ i couldnt do it-ya- Kia had broken ones too and had them in his nostrils and along his gum line-pretty sure the porcupine didnt survive that battle. Nothing to do with horses but another valuable reason/lesson why dogs should not be allowed to roam at will!!!

Hope everything went OK and no body got hurt. I would think letting the pony help get the quills out would be the easiest way. Ya know like hold the leg still, get a good hold of the quill with vise grips, let go of the leg and hold on to the vise grips tight. The pony does all the pulling when she tries to kick
Hopefully we will get a play by play update

One thing I also learned is that if you don't get the end of the quills out they can travel though the body and come out at any point!

My dobie got into a porcupine TWICE and and to take him to the vet. Even after the vet got all the quills out, during the next few weeks I would find little bumps under his skin and squeeze it like a zit, and a piece of a quill would pop out. These were coming out in different parts where he had no quills to begin with!

Our local vet took me around with him a couple of times as when he was here in the spring he asked what I was doing for school and I told him I'm in pre-med which means I could go to medical or vet school and I'm not sure which yet. So, he called a couple of days later and said he was in the same position at one time and wanted to show me what the practice is like. Well, anyway, the second day I got to watch/help with the surgeries and a guy brought a bear dog in. I'm pretty sure the dog tried to eat the porcupine. We sedated him and I got to help pull the quills out. They didn't have hooks in the quills (The vet said many people think they do but they really don't. Not sure if it's a breed thing or what) but anyway, we just pulled them all straight out. He had some piercing his tongue, cheek and nose. Poor guy. Anyway, we couldn't get all of them of course. I mean, we got all that we saw but he said you can never get them all but he gave antibiotics so that the ones left in don't cause a major infection. They'll be sore but there's not much else you can do. It was actually a pretty fun experience!

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